Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!pyramid!athertn!jimb
From: jimb@athertn.Atherton.COM (Jim Burke)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Magnetic encoding on cards.
Message-ID: <6688@athertn.Atherton.COM>
Date: 19 Jul 89 21:47:30 GMT
References: <2549NU013809@NDSUVM1> <4181@ima.ima.isc.com>
Reply-To: jimb@athertn.UUCP (Jim Burke)
Organization: Atherton Technology, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 34

In article <4181@ima.ima.isc.com> johnl@ima.ima.isc.com (John R. Levine) writes:

>I have seen lots of mag stripe readers that plug into PCs, typically apppearing
>either as a serial terminal or as "magic fingers" that type the stripe contents
>on the keyboard.  I've never seen a PC stripe recorder.  I suspect that given
>the fairly well founded paranoia of the credit card industry, stripe writers
>would be relatively hard to get.

This is interesting.  I happened to stop at a gas station near Clear Lake
California a few weeks ago and they used magnetic stripe technology to 
operate their gas pumps.  It worked like this:  you go in and pay the
cashier any amount of money you want, up to a limit.  The cashier passes
a thin plastic card (credit card sized but very thin) through what is
presumably a reader/recorder.  You then take the card out to the pump
and pass it through a reader and pump your gas.  I don't believe you  
necessarily have to use all the credit on the card at one time - you 
presumably could buy all your gas for the month at one time.  When the
card is empty, you toss it into a little bin they provide.  The pump
must write to the card in order to erase the credit.  It seems like there
is room for abuse for this system if card reader/recorder devices were
readily available unless they used one heck-of-an encryption scheme on
the cards.  Still, it is an interesting concept.  Perhaps ten years from
now your employer will just hand you a little card instead of a paycheck
and you can carry it around with you to buy things, or swipe it through
your home unit (with a modem) to pay your bills.  Handy, eh???





-- 
Jim Burke        (408) 734-9822 (temp)  | I'll stop posting when they pry my 
jimb@Atherton.COM                       | cold, dead fingers from the smoking
{decwrl,sun,hpda,pyramid}!athertn!jimb  | keyboard.